Hocus Pocus, It's Fall!

I can not think of a better book to start off the month of October with!   October, the month of leaves changing, pumpkins, a chilly nip to the air, and of course Halloween!  It's the month of scary movie marathons, books, decorations, hay rides, and haunted houses for kids and adults alike!  I have been put under a spell, and can't wait to share the magic of this book with you.  I have a feeling you will find it as wonderful as I do.

Hocus Pocus, It's Fall!


Written by Anne Sibley O'Brien
Illustrated by Susan Gal

Very first thing to grab my attention...the title.  Hocus Pocus! I love that movie, and rushed to pull this book off the shelf.  Then you see the adorable cover!  Yes, my heart had very high expectations for this book.  Anne and Susan did a phenomenal job in meeting my hearts expectations!  I adore this book!

This is a FUN book to read aloud.  It's impossible to not have fun, get excited and capture your audience's attention when you're using magic words like Abracadabra or burst out in laughter with phrases like Higgledy piggledy! This is one of the magical books that everyone who reads it is animated which brings the book to life and gets children's interested in reading and begging you to read it again.

Anne has done a great job in highlighting so many of the marvels of fall, from going back to school, to jack-o-lanterns, to migration, and silkweed plants.  The silkweed also called milkweed was new to me and I had to ask my husband and look up information about this plant to find out what O'Brien was talking about when she said "Spiky pods are brown and dried. Open sesame! Clouds inside."  As I've said before I love when I learn something new from books.  I love that she took something that is so overlooked that I didn't know what it was and put it in the book.

While this book is just a fun book to read it does offer many lessons that you can take and expand upon or do activities around.  Since I've mentioned fall leaves and hayrides in Fun Fall Books we can skip those activities and focus on some new ones that are brought up in this book.

Migration and Hibernation

In the illustration and text we see Geese flying south, squirrels collecting acorns, and chipmunks hibernating in their burrows. Depending on the age group you are with and how interested they are you can take this into a fun project and go into as much depth as you want.  Where do the Geese go?  Pull out a map and mark it with their migration.  Then find out what other birds or if there are other animals that migrate.  The monarch butterfly migrates, and so do some snakes. What animals travels the farthest?  This could be a very fun project for your class.  You can make a couple writing prompts about it as well like the one pictured here.  A great way to end a lesson on migration with a focus on geese is to watch the movie Fly Away Home.  It's an older movie but one of my favorites.
Now that we know what animals migrate, which animals hibernate?  How does that work?


Seeds
In Seeds of Fall I shared a couple books and talked about plants coming to harvest but O'Brien has shared a something new that you can focus a lot of time on: silkweed.  This one plant is vital to Monarch Butterflies and you can do a whole lesson on what it looks like, how people think of it as a week, and how to make a garden to attract these butterflies.

Pumpkins and Apples
If you take a trip to a pumpkin patch or orchard take a look at all the different shapes, sizes, and variety of the fruits and vegetables.  Make applesauce or a pie together.

Susan Gal has done a fantastic job in showing fall magic and capturing life, movement, and all that fall brings with it into her illustrations.  They are full of colors and texture.  This book is an expanded page good, so after the "magic" words you expand out a page to see the magic unfold and the scene change.  I love this concept and how she has taken each event that Anne mentions and finds the details to bring forth.  I love how Susan has included so many extraordinary elements to what could have just been and ordinary scene.  For example when Anne is telling about leaves changing color when you expand the page Susan didn't just paint a forest of autumn colors ablaze, she included hot-air balloons!  When you expand the migration page it's not just birds flying in the sky, you see cranberry farmers harvesting the fruit as the birds fly overhead.  These small details could be overlooked but they offer talking point.  I had my kids guessing about the cranberries, they thought they were just raking up leaves so it offered us an opportunity to go into how cranberries are grown.
Another thing I want to point out about these illustrations is how Susan Gal has combined so many different elements into her art.  You can clearly see that she used paint, and crayons, and as someone who is not an artist I'm not sure what other medias she used; but you can see that the art is complex.  All the elements and different textures make these images ones that you want to study and are beautiful to look at.

I hope you find this book as lovely as I have.  It may well be your favorite fall book yet!

If you are interested in the book or any of the movies I listed above here are some affiliate links to them directly.  By using these links I will get a credit at no additional cost to you and I thank you all for your support in either buying from my blog or just by reading it.

For my fellow Hocus Pocus fans check out this book and fun shirt: